The Political Thread

[Tjm86]

Spent about 30 seconds 'listening' to Cummings' testimony.  It's a wonderful situation we're in right now, isn't it?  Which duplicitous, scheming, lying, back-stabbing bar-steward do you believe the most?  I really do despair for this country.   

[Professor Bear]

Don't worry, the peerless British press will hold them to account.  We're just one unnecessarily-smug Marina Hyde column away from real social change.

[The Legendary Shark]

Don't worry, the peerless British press will hold them to account.  We're just one unnecessarily-smug Marina Hyde column away from real social change.

Most people  I know, sadly including my mother, believe every word they hear. "Don't be daft, Mark, they're not allowed to lie."

Makes me weep.

[milstar]

Most people  I know, sadly including my mother, believe every word they hear. "Don't be daft, Mark, they're not allowed to lie."

Makes me weep.

I don't know if it's the syndrome of watching telly too much or something else. To me, your government and press lying to you, are yesterday news to me.

[sintec]

Mr Cummings reports that the prime minister likes “chaos” as a mode of government because it forces others to await his arbitration, thereby bolstering his power. That is consistent with other accounts of Mr Johnson’s modus operandi: maintaining a deliberately weak cabinet, contradicting himself, making false public statements, making policy commitments one day and U-turning the next, procrastinating while the options narrow.

So Cummings would have us believe that Johnson is running the country much like Lord Julius runs Palnu in the Cerebus comics. Not sure how it's taken me this long to realise that similarity, particularly as I've only recently re-read High Society.

Lord Julius
    Grandlord of the city-state of Palnu, who exercises control by making the bureaucracy incredibly dense and incomprehensible. Julius is crafty and intelligent, but often plays the fool to confuse and baffle opponents.

[TordelBack]

Lord Julius' particular style of obscurantist misrule being in turn closely based on President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) in the brilliant Duck Soup. It is indeed a parallel that makes a lot of sense.

[zombemybabynow]

one step away from E J Saggs [from space truckers]

[sheridan]

Ah - Cerebus before Sim's nervous breakdown - still amongst the best comics every published.

Meanwhile, at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law - there was one political leader from the mid-twentieth century who gave obscure orders which had to be interpreted by underlings (who could suffer severe consequences if there interpretation was later judges to be incorrect)...

[Funt Solo]

Abortion: Texas teen attacks new law in high school graduation speech

The YouTube video linked in the article has a long intro. from one of her teachers, and Paxton Smith (for it is she) starts speaking at 4:38.

[karlos]

Fantastic speech.

[Funt Solo]

Xi Jinping calls for more 'loveable' image for China in bid to make friends

Meanwhile...

Tiananmen: Hong Kong vigil organiser arrested on 32nd anniversary
Xiaohongshu account blocked after post on Tiananmen anniversary
Microsoft says error caused 'Tank Man' Bing censorship
John Cena: WWE star says sorry to China for Taiwan remark
AI emotion-detection software tested on Uyghurs
Christopher Robin: Winnie the Pooh film denied release in China

[Funt Solo]

And: China has created a 'dystopian hellscape' in Xinjiang, Amnesty report says

Not messing around with euphemisms there, those Amnesty folk. Telling it like it is.

[karlos]

Read the headlines over morning coffee.

Shake head at utter desolation of it all.

Repeat daily.

[milstar]

After 70 million of deaths under Mao years, I expected Chinese to get wiser.

[Jim_Campbell]

After 70 million of deaths under Mao years, I expected Chinese to get wiser.

I can't now find it to link to, but I read an utterly harrowing and genuinely stomach-turning account of what happened at Tiananmen Square, where a realistic death toll is apparently more of the order of 10,000+ than any 'official' number, that kind of puts it into perspective. The answer of Chinese authorities to that old cry of "they can't kill us all" was a very emphatic "Not only can we, be assured that if we deem it necessary, we will."